"Actor: Richard Ingram"

• Q. - The Almost Complete Q | DVD | (20/11/2017) from £29.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Comedic madness in Spike Milligan's ground-breaking, wild, subversive and nonsensical BBC sketch comedy series from 1969 1980. Simply Media are delighted to announce release of Q: The Almost Complete Collection on DVD 20th November 2017, containing all surviving episodes from Qs 5-9 in this 5-disc set, on DVD together for the very first time. Originally shown by the BBC from 1969-1980, this BAFTA-nominated series is considered a landmark in British Comedy. The fast-paced, anarchic sketch comedy will delight fans of the series and Spike Milligan's work. Written by and starring BAFTA-winner Spike Milligan in a variety of silly outfits and outlandish situations involving idiot Boy Scouts, Adolf Hitler, and the Royal Family. The original Q5 of 1969 was heralded as the inspiration behind Monty Python's Flying Circus, which debuted a few months later. It's also one of the best showcases of Spike's surreal and eccentric humour. Sketches come in thick and fast, and jump from one plot point or location to another with no explanation, and sometimes no apparent conclusion. Bizarre, yes. Funny, most definitely! Terry Jones and I adored the Q... shows , recalled Michael Palin for Spike's biography, [Milligan] was the first writer to play with the conventions of television. The BBC initially delayed re-commissioning the ground-breaking Q series until the Monty Python series ended, despite the impact Q had already had on the world of alternative comedy, and at a time when Kenny Everett and Not the Nine O'clock News were further testing the limits of TV Comedy. However, the popular Q returned over 6 years later for four further series. It is clear to see Monty Python in Spike's work, with Life of Brian's Chris Langham on the writing team and Monty Python's Flying Circus director Ian MacNaughton directing some episodes. For Q8 and Q9, direction was taken over by the talented BAFTA-winning Ray Butt (Only Fools and Horses). Spike leads a fantastic cast of co-performers including John Bluthal (The Vicar of Dibley), Bob Todd (Superman III), John D. Collins (˜Allo ˜Allo), Peter Jones (The Rag Trade), and Margaret Nolan (Goldfinger), Alan Clare (Rising Damp) and a self-parodying David Lodge in yet more surreal, outrageous and determinedly under-prepared sketches and musical interludes. Enjoy all the madness and mayhem of Spike Milligan's Q again with this landmark DVD collection.

• Peter Cook and Dudley Moore - The Best of Goodbye Again | DVD | (14/03/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Available for the first time on DVD!!! Classic Peter Cook and Dudley Moore sketches that have been lost for 35 years now available to see for the first time since the original broadcast in this tribute to a legendary comic duo. In addition there's plenty of bonus footage from the ATV vaults!

• Michael Collins | DVD | (25/09/1998) from £9.85   |  Saving you £4.14 (42.03%)   |  RRP £13.99

  A heartfelt epic from Irish director Neal Jordan (The Crying Game, Interview with the Vampire), Michael Collins is the biography of the charismatic and controversial Irish rebel leader who led the fight for independence from Britain. Among the most beautiful and atmospherically photographed movies of the 1990s, Michael Collins is also a rich and intelligent study of the nature of politics and leadership: the IRA spokesman, full of fiery convictions, eventually gives way to the more mature negotiator who strives to reach a compromise solution and is politically undone in the process. Liam Neeson gives a grand and towering performance as Collins, but for all the character's legendary, heroic, or otherwise larger-than-life attributes, Jordan and Neeson also keep him human. This is sweeping historical filmmaking of the kind we haven't seen since the heyday of David Lean, but with Jordan's characteristic touches of complexity and ambivalence. --Jim Emerson

• Bulldog Breed, The / One Good Turn | DVD | (12/05/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  In 1960, Norman Wisdom was left all at sea in The Bulldog Breed. He had already made a farce of the army in The Square Peg (1958), so what better than to join the navy? Back in the real world, the Russians had kick-started the space race putting Sputnik into orbit, so Norman rapidly finds himself selected to be the first Brit in space. Playing to type, the result is excellent physical comedy and copious tomfoolery at the expense of the upper ranks. With support from John Le Mesurier and Edward Chapman (the legendary "Mr Grimsdale") and uncredited appearances from Oliver Reed and Michael Caine, this is a notable British comedy, with an unusually direct reference to the risqué Carry On movies. For his second starring role Norman Wisdom played the oldest orphan of Greenwood Children's Home in 1954's One Good Turn. Not only does he have to find the money to buy one of the orphans a model car, but after a visit to Brighton he discovers Greenwood is due to be closed down by the home's own unscrupulous chairman, a property developer with plans to build a factory on the site. Also starring Thora Hird, One Good Turn was surely a film with a personal resonance for Wisdom who was himself brought-up in an orphanage after his mother died and his father was unable to raise him. As would become a tradition, he contributes a song, "Please Opportunity", and the movie, though produced by Rank, now sits easily in that classic Ealing era where the ordinary man took on the big guys and won. The innocent knockabout humour remains appealing. --Gary S Dalkin